When it comes to motivation, not all praise is the same.

It makes sense to me that if I want to spark motivation in my students, giving them feedback, as long as it’s positive, will help them feel motivated.  After all, praise is praise right? Maybe not.   Yesterday I listened to an excellent eSeminar, “The Science of Motivating Students for Success,” Christine Harrington, author of Student Success in College: Doing What Works!, To access the seminar go to:

http://community.cengage.com/Site/devstudies/m/mediagallery/1704.aspx?channel=Eloqua&elq_mid=2996&elq_cid=

One of the points she made related to the nature of praise and how different kinds of praise inspire more motivation than others.  For example, telling a student “You did a great job on this.  You’re clearly very bright.” vs. “You did a great job on this.  You clearly worked hard.” Results in differing levels of motivation for these students to persist, succeed, etc. 

Why might this be so?  The answer lies in the interplay between how a person explains his success and the type of feedback we give him.  Telling a student that she must be really smart gives her the message that the reason she did well was because of something internal to her but also something that is pretty fixed. Intelligence or ability is usually seen as unchangeable.  If, on the other hand, telling same student that she worked really hard gives her message that it’s still something internal, but it isn’t fixed.   If she keeps putting effort in, she will do well. Effort is changeable.  We can always choose to try harder. 

The reasons we come up with for success or failure are known as attributions. According to attribution theory of motivation (http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Locus_of_control), we attribute events in our lives to internal or external factors. Internal factors are ability and effort.  External are ease of the task or luck.  Internal attributions for positive outcomes in our lives increase our motivation to keep going.  But…an internal, changeable attribution like effort results in the greatest level of motivation. 

What does this mean for us as educators? Telling our students that they are bright may not help them to stay motivated.  If I do well because I’m smart, then when  I don’t do well because it’s  I’m not smart.  If I do well because I worked hard, then when I don’t do as well, I didn’t try hard enough.  Both attributions are internal but the former is unchangeable while the latter isn’t.  I can’t do very much about my ability, but I can put more effort out. 

So praise is not all praise in terms of helping our students to become and stay motivated “You worked hard” is the best feedback we can give students and…this doesn’t mean that they aren’t intelligent, as well.